In today’s irregular warfare, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems focus more on detecting, tracking, and identifying enemies on foot or in civilian vehicles, rather than in traditional military vehicles.

This kind of surveillance is handled, in part, by the Vehicle and Dismount Exploitation Radar system (VADER). VADER is an airborne tactical radar system.

VADER control and exploitation tasks are performed by BAE Systems’ VADER Exploitation Ground Station (VEGS). Through VEGS, operators schedule real-time control of the VADER radar. VEGS processes VADER’s data for real-time detection and tracking of moving targets, and collection of radar images to detect stopped vehicles. VEGS data exploitation capabilities operate in near real–time, enabling warfighters to detect and act on significant events as they happen.

BAE Systems’ role in VEGS, and the larger VADER system, has spanned technical concept development with government partners (DARPA, the Army’s Communications-Electronics Research, Development, and Engineering Center, and Joint IED Defeat Organization) through development, flight-test validation, deployment, and operations in theatre.

We continue to operate VEGS in theatre, providing vital intelligence products to warfighters, and improving VEGS capabilities based on field experience. The VEGS architecture, components, and integration technologies are being applied to a number of spinoff multi-intelligence systems.